Notes: Julia Borissova in her recent artist book, Dimitry, investigates the Russian Tsar Dimitry Ivanovich, the youngest and last son of Ivan IV the Terrible, a child of eight who died under “mysterious circumstances” in 1591. What results is Russian intrigue & speculation perhaps similar to the stories and lore in the US about who all killed President Kennedy or was responsible for the death of Marilyn Monroe. The story of Dimitry Ivanovich is further confounded by the whispers that he narrowly escaped the murder attempt and that he and his descendants still live on, again perhaps similar to current sightings of Elvis.

Borissova states in her introduction “I was intrigued by how the story can go on without the actions of a hero and how his absence can play a major role and catalyze the further development of the story. It is absence that creates legends and turns them into a myth over time.”

There is little known about this young boy Dimitry and apparently even less about the events that occurred in 1591 thus leaving ripe the narrative of his sad saga and the lingering effects on Russian culture. Her narrative is based on a small part of reality, large doses of myth and all wrapped in an enigma. To develop her elusive narrative Borissova has creatively leaned into photo-collage, montage, and layered images interwoven with some documentary style landscape photographs. The photo-collages and montages are initially jarring appearing almost crude in the stark lines of the constructed objects, but this images are also poetic, abstract and wonderfully metaphoric. Her interior images remind me of the style of the Russian abstract montage artist of the 1920s.

Thus Borissova’s narrative has been symbolically ripped from the pages of a Russian 1920’s version of People magazine. She continues to be a Russian photobook artist to watch.